The Persians of Æschylos

IN a preceding essay,¹ intended as an historical introduction to the present subject, it was mentioned that early in the fifth century B. C., probably soon after 494, the tragic poet Phrynichos produced at Athens a drama entitled The Capture of Miletos. For the information we are indebted to a passing allusion by Herodotos. In spite of a discouraging reception on one other and undoubtedly a subsequent occasion, Phrynichos ventured to exhibit a purely historical tragedy. This, and something more, we learn from the introductory remarks, or “ hypothesis,” of an ancient commentator, which in the manuscripts of Æschylos is found prefixed to The Persians. The scene of Phrynichos’ play, also, was laid at Susa. It had a prologue, spoken, or at least opened, by a slave, who was engaged in preparing the seats for the council meeting of the Persian elders. In the course of this prologue, moreover, which was probably a soliloquy, the defeat of Xerxes was mentioned. The resemblance to Æschylos’ play, which already becomes evident, extended to the opening words. The first line of Phrynichos’ tragedy ran,

This drama was called Phœnissæ; that is, The Phœnician Women. The men of Phœnicia were actually serving on Xerxes’ fleet in 480 B. C., in which year the scene is of course laid. Whether the women were supposed to be present in the Persian capital, as slaves, hostages, or captives, we are not told. The tragedy of Phrynichos was evidently performed at an earlier date than Æschylos’ drama. Indeed, the opening sentence of the hypothesis accuses Æschylos of plagiarizing his Persians from the rival poet’s Phœnissæ. The fragmentary and tantalizing nature of our information regarding the entire history of the Greek drama is aptly illustrated by this example. We know nothing positively, beyond what is already stated, as to Phrynichos’ play.

But Plutarch, in his life of Themistocles, says that the latter was choragos — that is, took his turn, as rich men had to do, at paying the cost of representing a group of tragedies — on a certain occasion when Phrynichos was the poet. Themistocles, as was usual, set up an inscribed tablet to commemorate the victory of Phrynichos over his rivals. Plutarch repeats the inscription, and the mention of the archon — the usual Athenian method of designating a year — fixes the date as 476 B. C. It is not stated what plays were performed.

Now, it is unlikely that such a drama as the Phœnissæ was acted in 479 B. C., when a large part of Xerxes’ army was still within Thermopylæ. It might have appeared, however, in any year between that date and 472, when Æschylos’ Persians was first brought out.

It remains, therefore, a surmise, though a most attractive and credible one, that the Phœnissæ was one of the plays offered in 476. It has been ingeniously argued, further, that the chorus was made up of Phœnician women, because the exploit of Themistocles against the royal fleet was made prominent in the plot, to the neglect of Aristides’ valuable services on the same day, and the next year at Platæa.

It is really a pity that these “ fruitful conjectures,” as a German scholar would call them, will probably never be actually proved true. It would then be easy to see the motives which prompted Æschylos, in his turn, only four years later, to bring the same subject upon the stage. Æschylos naturally belonged, in Athenian affairs, to the conservative side, of which Aristides was still the foremost representative. It is certainly worthy of remark that both the exploits of Aristides are made the most of in the Æschylean play; the battle of Platæa in particular being, as we shall see, dragged into notice by a rather violent dramatic device. Themistocles’ deeds are not belittled, it is true, but it is noticeable that no Grecian chieftain is mentioned by name, or even distinctly alluded to. On the whole, it seems highly probable that our play actually was to some extent, though not in any unartistic or unworthy sense, a political stroke, and a counter-argument to a drama written for Themistocles by Phrynichos. Both the rival leaders, as well as thousands of veterans of the war and other eye-witnesses of the sea fight, were no doubt present in the theatre when the drama was performed. This is the best possible guarantee that the poet aimed at accurate treatment of all the local and wellknown features of his plot, at least.

It would not be difficult to discern the motives which prompted both tragic poets to transfer the scene of their plays to Persia. The Greek drama was not, despite its name, one of action, but consisted of little more than effective declamation in costume. It would never have occurred to an Athenian that a mimic representation of the sea fight at Salamis, or of any great battle, could be put upon the stage, — unless indeed it were the comic stage. There was no place in Hellas itself to which the tidings could be brought, in the play, with good dramatic effect.² Furthermore, any account of the struggle from the lips of Greeks could hardly avoid the tone of excessive exultation, which was regarded as most offensive to the Hellenic gods. Xerxes, in his insolence and pride, was the chief tragic figure, defying Zeus, like the mythical Salmoneus and Capaneus.

There is very little indication in the drama, however, of familiarity with Persian customs and beliefs. The theology and moralizing of the chorus would shock no orthodox Greek. Indeed, the very costume of its members was unquestionably the regular tragic dress, over which were doubtless worn some more or less accurate insignia of their assumed character. There is not much of what we call “local color” in the play, and that little is not remarkable for its accuracy. As to the entire treatment of Darius, we must go further ; for his effectiveness as a character in the drama is secured by a deliberate suppression of the most familiar historic facts.

Our play differs from most later ones, and indeed even from that of Phrynichos, in having no prologue, beginning at once with the entrance of the chanting chorus. It is, moreover, hardly practicable to divide The Persians into a regular succession of episodes or acts, with intervening choric songs, such as are clearly marked in the fully developed Athenian drama. The original choral element is still very prominent in this early tragedy. The play divides itself most naturally into three sections: the first culminating in the detailed account of the defeat at Salamis, delivered by the messenger; the second embracing the appearance of Darius’s ghost and his prophetic allusion to Platæa; the third signalized by the appearance of Xerxes himself. It is the gravest fault of the drama, as a work of art, that of these three main divisions of the subject the first was to the original auditors, and is still to us, incomparably the most interesting of all, while the last is the least effective. Indeed, the effort of the poet and the dignity of the dramatic action both fall off unmistakably in the closing scene.

The well-known theatre of Dionysos, on the southern side of the Athenian Acropolis, was not completed until late in the fourth century B. C. There is no trace of stone constructions of an earlier date. Throughout the golden period of the Greek drama, the fifth century, the spectators sat on wooden benches upon the hillside, and any arrangements made for the actors were probably of an equally temporary character. In our play, the palace of the Persian king was represented at the back of the scene. At the spectators’ right was visible Darius’s funeral-mound, and perhaps also something to indicate that the city of Susa lay in that direction. Whether there was a stage, elevating the actors proper above the level of the orchestra in which the chorus appeared, is still a subject of the fiercest controversy. The writer ventures to suggest that the palace may have been approached by two or three steps, as was the case with a Greek temple, while the orchestra indicated the ordinary level of the street or open square in front of the royal abode.

The twelve members of the chorus, representing the venerable councilors of the king, enter from the right, as if coming from the city, to the anapestic movement of their marching song.

Even so early the note of anxious foreboding is struck, and the same tone is heard more and more persistently, despite the utmost apparent effort to maintain a spirit of proud confidence in the invincible host. Here begins an enumeration of the chief divisions of the royal array.

These barbarous names, with their broad " Italian ” vowels, sounded as formidable and unfamiliar to Athenian ears as they do to our own. They were, in fact, largely invented by Æschylos for that very purpose, though a few actually appear in Herodotos and other chroniclers of the century.

It will be remembered that Egypt had revolted in the last years of Darius, and had since been reconquered by Xerxes. Hence its appearance here in the imposing catalogue of the king’s forces.

“ The race that dwell on the mainland ” is the very delicate allusion of our poet to a most painful fact. The recently subjugated Greek cities of Asia and the adjacent islands had furnished, under dire compulsion, a large portion of Xerxes’ fleet. They had since been for the most part liberated by the forces of the Delian league, of which they gladly became members ; and now, at the great spring festival of Dionysos, representatives from many of those cities may have been sitting in the Athenian theatre and listening to this very song. They could not share in the pride with which such reminiscences filled every Athenian heart; but the tragic poet does not wound the tender feelings of his city’s guests.

Omitting a stanza or two, we may add the last measures of the anapestic march: —

The anapests end here, and the councilors have doubtless reached their proper position, facing the palace, expectantly awaiting the appearance of Atossa, the queen mother. Yet before she comes forth they chant a long series of lyric stanzas in more elaborate choral metres, which an English version can hardly reproduce.³

Helle, the daughter of Athamas, was one of the two children carried off by the golden-fleeced ram of the familiar myth. She fell from the ram’s back in mid-air, and was drowned in the strait that divides the continents, which from her took the name Hellespontos.

The reader of Herodotos will recall the story of the bridges. The first one constructed was quickly carried away by the current, whereupon Xerxes caused the “ bitter and treacherous river ” to be cursed and scourged. Fetters were also thrown into the stream, at the king’s command. There was even a story that he sent men to brand it as a royal slave. Though Herodotos rejects this detail as incredible, it is quite as characteristic as the rest.⁴ The two bridges over which the army safely crossed were subsequently constructed by the Phœnicians, who were also the most skillful among the workers on the great canal dug behind Mount Athos.

The phrase “ harsh commanders ” is, perhaps, a significant detail. It was customary for Persian officers to drive their men, presumably those of alien and subjugated races only, with scourges into battle. The “ golden race ” is an allusion to the story of Danaë, the mother of Perseus, from which hero the ruling caste in Persia were believed to trace their descent. Of course the idea was purely a Greek invention, suggested by the similarity of names.

This contrast between the spear and bow as the favorite arms of Greece and Persia is often insisted on in our play. The long pikes of the Spartan infantry in particular were really an important element of superiority in the field.

But the very mention of the unfamiliar sea brings dread afresh to the hearts of the aged Persians. The next stanza is unmistakably in the minor key.

This tone of anxiety does not grow lighter before the long ode closes, a few stanzas farther on, with these lines : —

In such passages the English reader will without doubt be reminded of old Allan-bane’s vain effort to draw from his harp, for Ellen’s sake, a strain of joyous hopefulness : —

The old men now evidently take their seats in the portico of the palace, until they rise again, a moment later, to receive Atossa.

At this point, Atossa, widow of Darius, and regent during her son’s absence, is brought out in her palanquin from the palace.

This, accordingly, the councilors proceed to do, but the anapests, which had been resumed for a few lines, are again dropped. The dialogue proceeds for some time in long trochaic lines. This metrical form is an unnatural and therefore a difficult mould for English sentences, but in the early Greek tragedy, as Aristotle tells us, it was the favorite metre of the dialogue, though later displaced by the iambic trimeter. Its presence here is of course an added proof, if any were needed, of the early date of our drama.

In the following passage the familiar iambic metre appears for the first time in the play. Readers interested in questions of metrical form will notice, without further remark, how the iambics alternate with trochees in the conversational portions of our tragedy.

The dream of the dowager queen is intended to be easy and certain of interpretation. It is remarkable, however, that the Greek poet represents the Persian and Greek nations as sisters, and alike faultless in face and figure; that is, as the two noblest nations of the earth. He could of course know nothing of that actual community of origin among the so-called Aryan nations which is now so well established; nor is it likely that the resemblances in the two languages were of a kind to strike a Grecian ear. Perhaps the mythical descent of the Persians from the Greek hero Perseus may have influenced this passage to some extent. But it has been remarked elsewhere that Herodotos also shows a large appreciation of Persian character.

Atossa continues: —

This humiliation of the royal eagle by the baser bird is also a portent whose meaning can hardly be missed. Despite the defiant tone of these closing words, or indeed all the more for that, both the dream and the actual occurrence of the morning serve their dramatic purpose, and the cloud of foreboding hangs yet more darkly over the royal home. We seem already to hear, as it were, the coming feet of the messenger of woe.

The expression “ prophetic soul ” intimates that the aged leader, who here and elsewhere speaks for the council, foresees clearly the evil which is at hand.

During this and other passages those on the stage no doubt turned their eyes often toward the tumulus of Darius.

There is a certain improbability in this inquiry and the ensuing conversation, at so late a time. In the same manner, the Homeric Helen, in the tenth year of the Trojan war, points out to Priam the chief heroes of the beleaguering host. Such license is, however, constantly necessary, in order to bring effective material within the dramatist’s limits. We can easily imagine with what applause the Athenian audience received some of the following lines.

With this emphatic compliment should be compared the statement of Herodotos to the same effect, quoted in the previous paper. It would be too curious to ask how the councilor chances to be so well informed. He may himself have served against the Athenians in former years.

The evils alluded to are especially the destruction of Sardis and the rout at Marathon. The intimation that the power of the Athenians was not dependent on mere numbers would not be lost upon the poet’s auditors.

This highly poetical metaphor is the earliest reference we have to the silver mines in southern Attica, which had enabled the Athenians to equip the great fleet for the war with Xerxes.

So the messenger, for whom we have been waiting, now enters from the left; that is, from a foreign land, according to the conventions of the theatre. It will be profitable to study attentively the manner in which we have been prepared for his arrival. Of action proper the play can, in the nature of things, have little or none, the actual contest being already decided and beyond the limits of the drama. It is only by leading up to the catastrophe that anything like a culmination of interest can be attained.

In the scene which ensues, the messenger’s long report is skillfully broken up into four chief divisions, and even here there is some effort to maintain the interest of the hearers by a certain retardation of the most vital information.

With this couplet begins a kommós, or threnody, the messenger responding with two-line speeches to the frenzied lamentations of the chorus.

Atossa, meanwhile, has regained such composure as befits her rank, and now asks the question she most dreads to hear answered.

Of this speech the reader has here been spared more than twenty lines, containing as formidable a list of barbaric names as had occurred in the opening chant.

— But tell me this, returning once again, How great the number was of Grecian ships, That with the Persian armament they dared To join in battle and in deadly strife.

If the messenger has an even higher appreciation of Athenian prowess than the spokesman of the chorus displayed just before, we must remember that his experience thereof is both more recent and more severe.

The allusion is of course to the famous message of Themistocles, carried by Sikinnos, who had been the instructor of the statesman’s sons. Still, by those not already familiar with the incident, it might hardly be noticed that these words could not refer merely to one of the numberless deserters who had streamed into Xerxes’ camp ever since he entered Thessaly. At any rate, there is no hint that this man had been sent by a Greek commander. It is a singular fact that the messenger was dispatched in broad daylight.

There has been no point in this thrilling account where it appeared seemly to interrupt the messenger. Moreover, for a final discussion of all the questions connected with the battle of Salamis, it is only necessary to refer to the paper by Professor Goodwin, printed in the first volume of papers of the American School at Athens. It has been generally stated by modern historians that the Persian ships crept into the bay of Salamis on the night succeeding Themistocles’ warning, and lined the entire shore of the bay on the Attic side, where they were discovered at daybreak facing the Athenians across the narrow waters. Such an evolution is utterly impossible, and indeed absurd. The strait is in one place hardly thirty-five hundred feet wide, and a dangerous shoal here reduces the width of the channel to barely eighteen hundred feet. That such a movement, with all the attendant noise and confusion, could have escaped the knowledge of the Greeks is in itself incredible. Numberless details in the story of Herodotos are irreconcilable with such a theory of the battle. It is not necessary, however, to seek information outside the account of Æschylos, who in such a matter as this is an unimpeachable — and happily also an unmistakable — witness to the truth. Xerxes simply blocked up the “ exit and the roaring strait ” on the side toward Piræus, and at the same time sent a force of ships around Salamis to close the avenue of escape to the westward. In the eastward strait the battle occurred. This explains the statement of Herodotos, that the wakeful Themistocles learned first from Aristides that the king had followed his advice. This is also the reason why the Greeks, as Æschylos says, were not visible to the Persians until they came forth to battle. An attentive reading of the messenger’s speech can leave no doubt in any unprejudiced mind.

The whole essay of Professor Goodwin should, however, be studied carefully. He endeavors, finally, to prove that every word of Herodotos is consistent with the same view of the movement of Xerxes. In this matter, the student may still retain the impression that Herodotos has here, as in other cases, only vague and inaccurate ideas as to the topography of the field, and expresses himself with corresponding vagueness and inexactness. His statements, even if actually opposed to the account of Æschylos, would have, on such a point as this, simply no weight whatever.

Of the real terror and the divided counsels among the Greeks we hear nothing from Æschylos. It was not necessary that his Persian messenger should know of these things, nor mention them if he did know. Nor was it a subject which the dramatist’s audience would care to have recalled. The silence of the poet in no way discredits the account of the historian.

But the messenger has much more to tell.

This exploit of Aristides and the Athenian infantry has been alluded to already, both in this and in the previous essay. Whatever the motive, dramatic or political, the importance of the incident has certainly been exaggerated by our poet. It did not “ doubly outweigh,” nor nearly equal, the decisive defeat of the Persian fleet. Nor should the poet have implied so close a connection as the closing lines are meant to indicate between the massacre on Psyttaleia and the retreat of Xerxes. The king was indeed greatly terrified by all the events of the day, and on the next night dispatched his fleet from Phaleron, the harbor of Athens, to make at once for the Hellespont and guard the bridges. His children also were sent back to Asia on shipboard. He himself, however, waited several days before moving toward the north with the land forces.

It may be added here that the island of Psyttalcia lies just outside the eastward strait between Salamis and Attica. Xerxes would not, then, have landed a heavy force there to intercept Greeks escaping from sinking ships, unless he expected his foes to make a stand, if anywhere, in the narrow channel, where the current might carry the crippled vessels still somewhat farther out. The movement would have been hardly intelligible, if the king held the Athenians already actually surrounded, and cooped up in one or both of the little horseshoeshaped inlets on the Salaminian side of the narrow landlocked bay.

The knowledge here displayed of the geography of the northern Ægean has convinced some German scholars that Æschylos must have served in the Thracian campaign under Kimon, the son of Miltiades, about 476 B. C., when the stronghold of Eion, on the Strymon, was besieged and wrested from the Persians. There is no detail, however, of a kind not equally well acquired at secondhand. As for the freezing and sudden thawing of the Strymon, it is said to be quite incredible, at the time when Xerxes must have reached its banks. The battle of Salamis apparently occurred about September 10, and the entire retreat of the king as far as the Hellespont occupied only forty-four days. The silence of the prose chroniclers leads us to regard this incident as purely a poetic invention.

The whole account of Xerxes’ retreat has been overlaid by later writers with romantic and harrowing details. Macedonia and Thrace had no doubt been swept clean by the army on its westward progress, a few months before, and in the present confusion and haste there must have been much suffering and heavy loss, especially among the troops of the tributary subject nations. But a single well-authenticated fact dissipates all the accounts of extreme privation, at any rate of Xerxes himself and his Persians. The corps of Artabazus, sixty thousand strong, was appointed to cover the retreat as far as the Hellespont. These troops then retraced their steps over the same line of march, suffering serious loss on the way in an assault upon Potidæa, and still mustered forty thousand men actually under arms for the decisive battle at Platæa, the next autumn.

With these words Atossa reënters the palace, and the messenger also withdraws, no doubt passing off to the spectators’ right, as if seeking his home. The space of time required until Atossa can prepare her libation and return is occupied with a mournful interlude of the chorus. Beginning with anapests, they glide off as usual into the paired lyric stanzas called strophes and antistrophes. Of the six stanzas a selection will suffice, as the action, if so it may be called, makes no step forward.

This declaration that Persia’s hold on the subject races is broken must be wholly prophetic, as no news save the tidings of Xerxes’ own defeat can as yet have arrived. But in the Athenian theatre, as an allusion to the liberation of the Ionians, it would be promptly understood, and perhaps enthusiastically applauded.

After this intermezzo Atossa again appears, coming forth from the palace. She is now walking, and her attendants bear the offerings mentioned just below.

These libations are in accord with Hellenic usage. Indeed, a similar though somewhat simpler offering to the shades is made by the Homeric Odysseus when he visits the underworld. The actual summoning forth of the departed monarch from his tomb, in broad daylight, was no doubt accepted somewhat more easily because represented as occurring in the far Orient, then, as now, the home of the marvelous.

Atossa is already pouring her gifts upon the ground beside Darius’s tomb, and the venerable councilors, with everincreasing vehemence, unite in beseeching the dead king to appear. As their excitement waxes, they pass once more from anapestic recitative to choral songs. Here again a selection of passages from the long ode will satisfy the reader.

Cho. But ye, O sacred Chthonian powers,
Hermes, and Earth, and thou, monarch of
ghosts,
Send from below his soul to the light.
For if yet a cure for our sorrows he knows,
He alone of the dead might reveal it!

Yet do thou. O Earth, and ye
Other lords of those who dwell
Underground, bid come to us
That divine and glorious one,
Susa-born, the Persians’ god !
Send him upward. Such an one as he
Never yet in Persian earth was hid.

For by the deadly miseries of war
Never did he his men destroy.
Like unto gods in counsel was he called
Of Persians, and godlike he was,
Since well his host he guided. Yea!
Our lord, our ancient lord, draw near!
Come to the summit of thy tomb.
Thy sandal, saffron-dyed, upraise,
Thy kingly tiara’s crest reveal.
Come, O benignant sire, Darius, come!

At last the ghostly king really appears at the top of the mound, visible, doubtless, at full length, from saffron sandals to kingly tiara. The latter is the peculiar symbol of his rank. One of the noblest remarks in the Anabasis, from the lips of the most ignoble Persian to whom history introduces us, is, Only the great king can wear the upright tiara on his head, but any man may wear it on his heart.”

The ghost has more life and manliness in him than any other character in the play, and holds his own with ease against Hamlet’s father or any other spirit that treads the boards. The real Darius of history is also a noble and inspiring figure ; but the resemblance between the two is slight. Like the Cyrus of Xenophon’s romance, this is merely an ideal monarch, on whom is bestowed an illustrious historic name. The best known facts regarding the father of Xerxes are, in this imaginative picture, not merely ignored, but reversed.

The reader should note the first words of the ghost, which show clearly that he has no idea of events occurring on the upper earth. The importance of this point will be seen presently.

This “ foolish trial” was in fact made by Xerxes most reluctantly, in obedience to Darius’s dying injunctions, and for the purpose of avenging the shameful repulse at Marathon in the father’s time. The latter fact, at least, has been plainly stated by Atossa in the scene with the messenger.

This confusion of the names Hellespont and Bosporos occurs in Sophocles’ Ajax, also, but it is a most fatal slip for Darius to make in this connection. He himself had, thirty years before, bridged the real Bosporos, and passed over it to an invasion of Europe hardly less disastrous than the one his son had since led.

Atossa evidently does not share the awe felt by the council for her liege lord King Darius, alive or dead. A little later she advances for her royal son the familiar excuse of “bad advisers.” But here she fearlessly intimates that it is only the issue that gives the ghost wisdom to condemn the act.

The notion that a doom, in itself inevitable, may be postponed by piety or hastened by folly is not an un-Hellenic belief. Herodotos even reports, with evident earnestness and full faith, the following reply of the Delphic Apollo to Crœsus’s complaints of ingratitude after all his princely gifts: “The god, by urgent intercession with the Fates, had procured the postponement of Sardis’s downfall for three years beyond the appointed time. A further delay, until the time of Crœsus’s children, he had pleaded for in vain.” Such ideas spring, apparently, from an earnest effort to reconcile a belief in the irresistible power of fate with that consciousness of freedom in action which persistently asserts itself in the heart of man.

Some have thought that the allusions in this passage to fetters, chains, etc., may have grown in the course of the next half century, through misunderstanding, into the stories concerning Xerxes’ childish rage against the Hellespont, which are repeated, with some incredulity, by Herodotos.

(I omit here a somewhat prolonged sketch of the earlier rulers of Persia. It is not essential to the drama, and not valuable as historical evidence.)

It might seem that this appeal is merely to the wisdom acquired by Darius from experience during his long earthly life. But he takes on, more and more distinctly, from this time forward, an omniscient and prophetic tone. This cannot be reconciled with his inquiries when first summoned forth. It would be absurd to say that his ignorance then was only assumed, or that his faculties are now first fully aroused. It is with dramatists as with others who have essayed to recall the spirits of the departed : they do not know how to control and dismiss them betimes. A similar inconsistency in Dante, regarding the amount of knowledge possessed by disembodied souls, was pointed out by the writer in his maiden essay in these pages. As to Æschylos, it is sufficiently clear that he saw here an opportunity for effective allusion to the final struggle at Platæa, which did not occur until the year after Xerxes’ flight. To this temptation he yielded, and that is our gain. The inconsistency with earlier passages in the play he has not removed. The political motive which may have influenced him at this point has been already discussed.

Already the dignity of the tragedy is rapidly falling off. The extravagant anxiety as to Xerxes’ tattered garments, the advice to the old men to enjoy life while they may, reconcile us to the departure of the kingly spirit immediately after these words. There is little remaining which deserves our serious attention. The lamentations upon the mimic scene are more and more evidently mere echoes of the exultation felt by the actual audience of Athenians.

The chorus, being now left alone, chant a stasimon, or ode, of seven stanzas, devoted entirely to the praise of King Darius. The two opening stanzas are: —

Then follows a list of the elder king’s conquests, wherein are mentioned, however, almost solely Greek cities and islands. The close of the ode makes perfectly clear that this catalogue of Hellenic communities is introduced expressly to remind the Athenians how the contest with the Persians had proved to be a war for the liberation of their brethren to the eastward. After mentioning the cities of the Asian mainland, and the islands that line its shore, the chant continues : —

(Salamis in Cyprus was believed to have been colonized from the famous little island of the same name.)

We have now reached the nine hundredth line of The Persians, and though the play is unusually brief even for an Attic tragedy, — much shorter than a single act in some of Schiller’s dramas, — yet the remaining one hundred and seventy verses might easily be spared. The closing scene, which is chiefly lyrical, is marked by no action save the entrance of Xerxes at the beginning, — in the fresh attire with which Atossa went to intercept him, — and the withdrawal of both monarch and council into the palace at the end of the play. The text of this entire passage is singularly devoid of poetic invention. The language is extravagant, and often quite incoherent. The music evidently grows tumultuous; the gestures and the alternating outcries of king and councilors express an ever wilder frenzy of despair.

The opening words of the king, as he enters, strike the tone of vain repining and self-reproach.

A few of the more coherent passages in the scene will fully content the reader. Such outbursts as this of the chorus are clearly meant to enforce the contrast with (the idealized) Darius : —

Indeed, Xerxes promptly confesses in reply.

Presently the chorus inquires for the various chieftains by name.

The next two queries of the chorus contain equally formidable lists of Persian names. Our readers will endure their omission the more readily since the ancient councilors have already heard the fate of most of those they mention graphically announced by the messenger not an hour before, and they are now merely harrowing their own feelings and rousing the remorse of the king. The last sixty verses are simply alternating single-line outcries, largely interjections, and scarcely capable of translation. When the king actually passes in, and the council, with the words

I will escort thee with grievous laments, follows, we can but draw a long breath of relief.

The first impulse of the critic, in treating such a passage, is to acquit the poet of responsibility, by assigning it to the later adapter, the interpolator, or some such convenient if imaginary scapegoat. In the present case, this way is apparently barred by the only nearly contemporary piece of evidence in regard to the reception accorded our play. In Aristophanes’ audacious comedy, the Frogs, there is a scene in the underworld, where Dionysos is comparing the claims of Æscliylos and Euripides, having arranged to bring back the worthier, that his own festivities may not lack a competent tragic poet. The scene contains a large amount of valuable literary criticism. In the course of it Æscliylos stoutly asserts: —

And Dionysos chimes in : —

We hardly know what to do, it is true, with this bit of evidence. Either the text or Dionysos’ memory is defective. We hear nothing in our play as to Darius’s death. Perhaps a slight change in a preposition would give a reading which could be rendered — from the lips of the dead Darius.

It is further curious that nearly every other imaginable Greek equivalent for “ alas ” occurs in these last sixty lines, but no manuscript offers us iauoi. Still, the inference is plain and safe that the populace — Dionysos is the people’s god — were delighted with these extravagant lamentations. We shall perhaps have to acknowledge, too, that they were a deliberate concession of the great poet to the taste of the groundlings.

It is often stated that in Æschylos’ time the tragic writers regularly exhibited three dramas closely connected in plot, followed, as a concession to popular conservatism, by a comic afterpiece, in which the traditional chorus of satyrs could be fittingly introduced. This assertion, however, oversteps in one respect the limits of our fragmentary knowledge. On two occasions we hear mentioned the names of dramas, offered by other poets than Æschylos, which show unmistakably a natural union of subject, at least among the three serious plays; and four such “trilogies” — the word itself is apparently of later origin — can be assigned with certainty to Æschylos himself. Many efforts have been made to demonstrate a similar association in other cases ; but these arguments, based as they are upon the meagre fragments or mere titles of the lost plays, cannot reach any satisfactory conclusions. A statement to the effect that Sophocles set the fashion of contending with " drama against drama ” is usually interpreted to mean that he first broke the thread of connection between his three tragedies ; for that three were still offered throughout the fifth century, by each contestant, is sufficiently clear from our evidence.

As to The Persians, the hypothesis already mentioned tells us that it was preceded by the Phineus, and followed by the Glaucos. Phineus is the king and soothsayer who was visited by the Argonauts. The latter drove away his less welcome guests, the Harpies. In return, the king gave the adventurous voyagers prophetic guidance and advice as to their future course. Remembering that Herodotus regards the Argonautic expedition as an earlier act in the struggle between Europe and Asia, we shall easily see how these prophecies may have been extended, in Æschylos’ play, so as to cover the Persian wars, and to foreshadow plainly the next drama of the group. It has been suggested that these are the very prophecies mentioned by the ghost of Darius as well known to him. We may add that Herodotos was largely under Athenian influences, and may have acquired this very belief in the significance of the Argonautic expedition more or less directly from Æschylos. This is, however almost wholly conjecture. As to the Glaucos, we can hardly be said to know anything. A satyr-drama entitled Prometheus, we are told, closed the performance. It was, of course, not connected in plot with the preceding plays, though such a connection can be demonstrated in several cases, and may have been for a time the rule.

We are glad to be assured of the important fact that Æschylos won the first prize on this occasion. His success was far from being a matter of course. Our poet was forty years old, and had been a dramatist for fifteen years when he first attained this honor. At a little later date, again, Sophocles, on his first appearance, defeated his veteran rival. Moreover, The Persians was apparently regarded as the most notable play of the group. We hear from several sources that it was afterward reproduced by the poet himself at the Syracusan court. We have seen that Dionysos, in Aristophanes’ Frogs, testifies to the popularity of the tragedy. Indeed, the passage from the Frogs reads as if Aristophanes and his audience were familiar with the drama. If so, it must have been repeatedly performed in the Athenian theatre, as its first production was about thirty years before the birth of Aristophanes, and almost seventy years earlier than the appearance of the Frogs. Its survival to modern times, also, must be regarded as an indication of a deliberate preference by later generations of Greeks.

All this only renders yet more remarkable the important fact to which it is desirable, in closing, to call the reader’s attention, namely, that no further attempt was made to bring upon the tragic stage, in any form, the events of recent history. That Æschylos always felt himself to be first of all a citizen of Athens, even his art being subordinate to the duties of patriotism, will hardly be questioned. It is to be conceded, also, that in later tragedies of his, notably the Seven Against Thebes and the Eumenides, certain passages were applied directly by the audience, perhaps with the poet’s approval, to events and persons of the day. But just at this stage, and even after so signal a triumph, Æschylos, and his rivals and successors as well, felt the danger of violating what must always be maintained as the chief canon of art,—that it exists for the creation of the beautiful.

That comedy, under Aristophanes, dealt most directly and mercilessly with Athenian politics and politicians is well known. But comedy aims at amusing, perhaps at instructing, through vivid delineation of the grotesque. The comic playwright, therefore, can hardly hesitate to lay hold upon contemporary events, upon familiar characters, in short upon whatever is local and best known, as his own peculiar birthright.

A tragedy did not, indeed, necessarily imply to the Greeks, as it usually does to us, a plot ending unhappily, or with the death of leading characters. There are dramas, even among the few we yet have, which close as happily as The Tempest or The Winter’s Tale. As a well-known example the Tauric Iphigeaia may be cited, though Sophocles’ Philoctetes is equally in point. Indeed, a certain tone of calmness, an approach to reconciliation after strife, characterized the close of the most painful plots, such as the Oresteian trilogy, which we still possess, and the group of tragedies based on the myth of Prometheus, of which the surviving play was probably the first. Nor was the use of grotesque and unheroic characters, especially as a foil to nobler natures, wholly unknown. The soldier who so exultantly leads Antigone before the king, the watchman crouching doglike on Agamemnon’s palace roof, the fussy old nurse of Phædra in the Hippolytos, may be recalled in this connection.

Nevertheless, the tragic poet, fully conscious of his office as the artist of the beautiful, felt, and rightly felt, that his creations should be set, as it were, upon a pedestal, above the turmoil and the outcries of the passing day. Despite this one unquestioned success, he was aware that the path entered upon in this historical and patriotic drama was a dangerous one, and it was followed no farther. On the contrary, the tradition confining tragedy to subjects drawn from the mythical age regained such strength that even Euripides made no attempt to break through it. So much the more should be our gratitude for the preservation of this idealized and yet most truthful picture of the proudest hour in Athenian annals, embodied in a play which maintains a lofty tragic dignity from the beginning almost to the close, and which is throughout informed by a spirit of pious faith and heroic endeavor befitting a great and growing race.

William Cranston Lawton.